


the ocean's at rest

by vass



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Other, does not contain spoilers for Ancillary Mercy, set between Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5057989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ship plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ocean's at rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



> Thanks to kaberett for swift and excellent betaing. <3

Captain Breq is in slow wave sleep. Her one body is lying still and relaxed on her bed, breathing even and slow, core temperature a little cooler than waking. Ship watches her, and makes plans. The bed was comfortable enough. There wasn't a lot Ship could do about furniture on short notice with open war breaking out on the station, but Captain Vel had favored a thick, quilted sleeping pad, and Ship had told Kalr Five to swap it for a thinner felted wool pad, guessing its new captain would prefer something firmer. That guess seems to have been correct.

Her medical data looks outright miraculous for someone who nearly died of decompression and associated injuries, and regained consciousness less than thirty hours ago. Which is to say that she needs sleep, mostly. Sleep and rest. And good food. Ship reads through her health data, including her genome and biome, to calculate her current optimal nutritional needs.

She's at least not in bad shape nutritionally, not like the mess of malnutrition and malabsorption that is Ship's new Amaat lieutenant, but Captain Breq still needs her strength to heal properly. She's already caught Kalr Five off guard by asking for skel and water for her first dinner aboard. Poor Five would have been indignant beyond words if Ship hadn't whispered to her that the captain was still convalescent and probably too tired to even taste her meal.

Skel is all very well. It's comfortingly familiar to most Radchaai, easy to grow and store and prepare, and very cheap. Cheap enough that it's worth Medic's having to treat a few soldiers every year for the consequences of an insufficiently varied or individualized diet. It provides the required energy and macro- and micronutrients, in a standard proportion for an an average adult citizen living in space, adjusted upward to allow for a soldier's activity levels, but no one's requirements are exactly the same, nor are they static, and eventually there are always problems. And that's not good enough for Ship's captain, comfort food or not.

Ship identifies which nutrients Captain Breq needs the most, and in what quantities, and which this segment will absorb most comfortably and efficiently. It correlates the results with which staple foods it has in inventory, selects some suitably palatable recipes, and sends the result to Kalr Five.

Her hip needs watching. The ball of her femur is slightly misshapen, the outer lip of the socket joint a little overgrown for it, so that the ball grinds against the cartilage inside. There's a tiny tear in the cartilage already, which will grow with time if it isn't repaired. The bone might grow as well. Such irregularities can occur naturally, but the specific shape of Captain Breq's hip joint, as well as the surrounding muscle, feels to Ship like the result of a wrongly calibrated orthopedic corrective. Under the circumstances, there's nothing Ship can offer to fix that. Medic doesn't have the resources to spare, and Omaugh Palace Station definitely doesn't just now, even if Ship weren't leaving the system in a week, and its captain already recovering from far more intensive surgery. It considers heat pads and muscle relaxants, decides against flagging the injury for Medic, at least for now.

Sex is probably not a priority at all, certainly not at present. Other forms of touch, though... Ship will watch for opportunities to provide her with that. The days when _Mercy of Kalr_ had hands of its own to brush an officer's hair, or arms to hold her, are gone forever. But it will do what it can.

There is music. That one is obvious. _Mercy of Kalr_ does not flatter itself that it has any songs to offer that _Justice of Toren_ One Esk hasn't already heard, but it will still make its music collection available to her, and give some thought to what other musical gifts it can offer her.

All of this is well and good, Ship thinks, but it seems inadequate. Its new captain is unexpectedly frustrating in this respect: she deserves so much, but her wants are so few.

As Ship thinks this, Captain Breq shifts out of slow wave sleep and up through the lighter sleep stages, and wakes. It is, Ship can tell, only a brief awakening of the sort that humans experience, and forget, periodically throughout the night. She stirs sleepily and reaches for Ship, a wordless _areyouthere?_ of the sort that any ship might send to another, either as the prelude to further communication or for simple assurance. Ship answers the data pulse as instinctively as it was sent. Captain Breq sighs, rolls over, and then before sinking back into sleep, opens a small data channel and holds it open without initiating a transfer. Ship thinks for a microsecond then, careful not to flood her with too much data, sends some of the small background communications sounds of the surrounding ships and station. Captain Breq hums once in response, not a musical note but a soft, contented _hmmm_ , then sleeps again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the traditional song 'Little Fishy'. The last verse: "The crew are asleep and the ocean's at rest / And I'm singing this song to the one I love best. Hey-ho, little fishy, don't cry, don't cry / Hey-ho, little fishy, don't cry, don't cry."


End file.
